Other non quilt highlights included as always the amazing home baking at West Kirk, where my children were treated to extra cakes, just because they remember them visiting as babies upwards. Thank you ladies. And a special thank you to Marjory McKinven and her sister Marion who were demonstrating themofax screen printing on the Saturday and let my second son have a go. He was really proud of his efforts and it was something that his siblings haven't done, which made it even better!

Friday, 25 May 2012

The annual Loch Lomond Quilt Show was held last week before the sunshine arrived in Scotland. The weather was probably the worst ever for the Show (which is quite an achievement!), but it didn't matter as the quilts were beautiful as ever. These are a few of my favourites from the non-competition galleries. I'll post the competition ones in the next few days.

Irene at the top had a lovely selection of her quilts, including many featuring bugs, all beautifully embroidered on. I know her as Irene the quilter, but apparently she has another life as a 'bug lady' (this is not a technical term!).

Cora Ham (untitled)

Cora is part of the Filanderers group. I wrote about them recently in Popular Patchwork and work by the other four were featured, but not work by Cora. Sorry Cora, it wasn't on purpose!

Helen Cowans - Swallows

Helen Cowans has a lovely selection of work about Goddesses, which given my current preoccupations was fascinating. I also liked her heavily painted pieces, like this one. Helen also has a blog, where you can follow her work.

Jane Appelbee - Turbulence

I loved the work by the former City and Guilds students, Off the Wall. Unfortunately the lighting in their venue is awful for photography, so it doesn't show their work to the best advantage.﻿

Ruth Higham - Greenfingers

The sun finally shone on Saturday and I nipped out to the outdoor exhibition. Ruth is one of the organisers of the show and still she finds time to make these lovely sunny pieces. Wow.

Wednesday, 23 May 2012

As well as making the journal quilts, over the past few months, I have also been making this new piece,Waves of Time. It is quite a bit bigger than A4, just over a metre in each direction. On the figure are lots of other little figures all embroidered on using my Pfaff Embroidery Unit. I wanted them all to be similar, but there are deliberate subtle variations, just as we are all different.﻿

Waves of Time (detail)
Gillian Cooper, 2012
110 x 120cm

I also kept away from regular shaped edges, as I didn't want a binding to frame the piece, I wanted it to go its own way.

I think it is more successful than the journal quilts - what do you think?

Wednesday, 2 May 2012

Actually, I think this is my favourite of them. It somehow feels less sterile than the other three - perhaps due to the loopy machine quilting or that I stuck less rigidly to my prescribed shapes of rectangles, circles and triangles.

I'm glad they are finished. But I have learned lessons. Much as I like playing with basic design, mixing that with journal quilts is not a happy combination for me! I hope the next colour is more exciting, I can't remember if it is to be blue or yellow, but either way, I can integrate it more into my main work, so hopefully it will be a more fruitful exercise!

Tuesday, 1 May 2012

So having felt so-so about the first two journal quilts for the Contemporary Quilt Group Challenge, I think a sense of boredom was setting in by the time I made the third. If I was getting bored by them, then I can't really expect anyone else to like them!

I can't remember which colour the next group of four is meant to be, but I have definitely decided that I don't want to continue with the basic shapes - it doesn't really strike a chord for me and making a series of work away from my main work has been a distraction rather than a way of refreshing my work. So being positive, I'm looking forward to making some new relevant work!